God's Playful Wisdom Text: Psalm 104:24-26
Introduction: The Folly of the God-Shaped Hole
We live in an age that is drowning in information but is starved for wisdom. Our natural philosophers and men of science can tell you the precise number of species in the sea and the exact orbital mechanics of the farthest planets, but they cannot tell you what any of it means. They are like men who have meticulously catalogued every word in a great library but have never once read a sentence. They have the facts, but they have missed the plot entirely. And the reason they miss the plot is that they have thrown out the Author.
The modern secular mind insists on explaining the world without reference to God. This is like trying to explain a pocket watch without mentioning the watchmaker. The result is a worldview that is necessarily absurd. They look at a universe of staggering complexity, intricate design, and breathtaking beauty, and their best explanation is that it all just sort of happened. An explosion in a print shop, they say, and out came Webster's dictionary. This is not science; it is a faith commitment to meaninglessness. It is a desperate flight from glory.
Psalm 104 is a direct assault on this kind of thinking. It is a hymn celebrating the Creator's ongoing, intimate, and joyful involvement with His creation. This is not the god of the deists, a distant clockmaker who wound up the universe and then went on vacation. This is the God of Scripture, who lays the beams of His chambers in the waters, who makes the clouds His chariot, and who opens His hand to feed every living thing. He is not embarrassed by the material world; He delights in it. He made it, He owns it, and He runs it down to the last sparrow and the smallest creeping thing in the sea.
The psalmist, having surveyed the heavens, the earth, the mountains, and the valleys, comes to a crescendo of praise. He is overwhelmed not by random processes, but by intelligent, creative, and joyful purpose. In the verses before us today, he turns his attention from the land to the sea, and there he finds the same divine signature. He finds a world teeming with life, ordered by wisdom, and filled with a kind of divine playfulness that should rebuke all our sour and dour religiosity.
The Text
How numerous are Your works, O Yahweh!
In wisdom You have made them all;
The earth is full of Your possessions.
This is the sea, great and broad,
There the creeping things are without number,
Creatures both small and great.
There the ships move along,
And Leviathan, which You have formed to play in it.
(Psalm 104:24-26 LSB)
Manifold Works, Singular Wisdom (v. 24)
The psalmist begins with an explosive declaration of praise:
"How numerous are Your works, O Yahweh! In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your possessions." (Psalm 104:24)
The first thing that strikes the man whose eyes have been opened is the sheer multiplicity of God's works. "How numerous!" or as the King James has it, "how manifold!" This is not the praise of a man who sees a bland, uniform world. This is the worship of one who sees variety, diversity, and an almost reckless abundance. God is not a minimalist. He did not create one kind of bird, but thousands. He did not make one kind of fish, but a sprawling, teeming multitude. From the microscopic plankton to the lumbering elephant, the world is bursting with His creative energy. The Darwinists see this variety and try to explain it through a blind, grinding process of competition and death. The psalmist sees it and says, "This is the work of a wise and generous God."
And it is all governed by a singular principle: "In wisdom You have made them all." This is crucial. The multiplicity is not chaos. It is an ordered, integrated whole. The word for wisdom here is chokmah, which speaks of skill, artistry, and intelligent design. This is the same wisdom that is personified in Proverbs 8, the wisdom that was with God at the beginning, His master craftsman. And we know from the New Testament that this wisdom is ultimately a person: Jesus Christ, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). All things were made through Him and for Him. So when we look at the intricate dance of the ecosystem, the fine-tuning of the cosmos, we are seeing the handiwork of Christ.
Finally, the psalmist makes a claim of ownership: "The earth is full of Your possessions." The word can also be translated "riches" or "creatures." The point is the same. Because God made it all, He owns it all. This is the foundation of the Creator/creature distinction. He is the potter; we are the clay. He is the landlord; we are the tenants. This world is not ours to do with as we please. We are stewards, and we will give an account for how we have managed His property. Every square inch of this planet, every mountain, every river, every city, belongs to Him. And our eschatology tells us that one day, every knee will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord over all of His possessions.
The Teeming Deep (v. 25)
From the general declaration of God's ownership of the earth, the psalmist turns his gaze to a specific and mysterious part of it: the sea.
"This is the sea, great and broad, There the creeping things are without number, Creatures both small and great." (Psalm 104:25 LSB)
For the ancient Hebrews, the sea was a place of mystery, power, and often, terror. It represented the untamable, the chaotic, the deep. It was a symbol for the turbulent nations of the world. But here, the psalmist sees it not as a rival power, but as another room in God's great house, and it is packed to the rafters with His creatures.
He notes its size, "great and broad," acknowledging its immensity. But this vastness does not intimidate God. He has filled it. It "teems," as the ESV puts it. The phrase "creeping things" is not derogatory; it is a general term for all the swarming, moving life in the ocean. And they are "without number." This is poetic hyperbole, of course, but it captures the sense of overwhelming abundance. God's creativity is not stingy. He makes life in overflowing, profligate measure.
And this life encompasses the full spectrum: "Creatures both small and great." From the krill to the whale, God made them all. He is the God of the microscopic and the God of the monstrous. He pays as much attention to the design of a shrimp's antenna as He does to the architecture of a galaxy. This is a profound rebuke to our pride. We tend to think that God is only interested in the "big things," like saving our souls or guiding the course of nations. But the psalmist reminds us that God is interested in everything He has made. He is the Lord of small things and great beasts.
Divine Playfulness (v. 26)
Now we come to one of the most remarkable verses in the entire Psalter, a verse that gives us a stunning insight into the character of God.
"There the ships move along, And Leviathan, which You have formed to play in it." (Psalm 104:26 LSB)
The psalmist first notes the presence of man's activity: "There the ships move along." Man, in his delegated dominion, uses the sea for commerce and travel. This is part of God's design. The sea is not just a fish tank; it is a highway for the nations. This points to the integration of God's world. Nature is not a pristine wilderness to be kept separate from man. It is the theater of man's work, worship, and dominion under God.
But then comes the showstopper. Alongside the ships of men, there is Leviathan. In other parts of Scripture, particularly in Job and Isaiah, Leviathan is a symbol of fearsome, chaotic power, often associated with arrogant pagan empires like Egypt or Babylon. God is praised for crushing the heads of Leviathan (Psalm 74:14). But here, in the context of creation, Leviathan is not an enemy to be conquered. He is God's creature. And what is his purpose? God "formed [him] to play in it."
Let that sink in. God made this great sea monster, this dragon of the deep, for fun. The word for "play" here can mean to sport, to frolic, to jest. Leviathan is God's rubber ducky. He is a display of God's joyful, creative, and sovereign power. God is not a grim tyrant or a cosmic killjoy. He is a happy God, and His creation reflects His happiness. He makes monstrous creatures simply for the delight of it, and He puts them in the ocean to frolic.
This is a direct polemic against the pagan myths. In the Babylonian story, the world is created when the hero god Marduk kills the chaos-monster Tiamat. Creation is born from conflict. In the Bible, God creates the sea monsters on Day Five and calls them "good" (Gen. 1:21). And here, He makes Leviathan to play. The things that pagans see as terrifying, rival deities are, to the God of the Bible, simply pets. This demonstrates His absolute, uncontested sovereignty. There are no rival powers. There are no gods of chaos. There is only Yahweh and His creation, and sometimes, He makes parts of that creation just for the sheer joy of it.
Conclusion: Worship the Happy God
What, then, are we to take from this? First, we must see that the world is shot through with the wisdom and glory of God. It is not a random collection of atoms. It is a symphony, and Christ is the composer. We should therefore study it, delight in it, and care for it as His possession.
Second, we must understand that God owns everything. Our lives, our talents, our money, our families, our nations, they are all His. We are not autonomous. We are stewards, and joyful stewardship is the only sane way to live in God's world.
But last, and perhaps most importantly, we must learn to worship a happy God. Our God is not perpetually frowning. He is not the great "No" in the sky. He is the God who rejoices in His works (Ps. 104:31). He is the God who formed Leviathan to play. The Christian life is not meant to be a grim, joyless affair. It is a call to enter into the joy of our Master. Yes, the world is fallen. Yes, Leviathan has become a symbol for sin and rebellion. But the original design, the blueprint, was one of wisdom, abundance, and play. And in Christ, God is restoring that original design.
Through the cross, Christ crushed the head of the ultimate Leviathan, Satan. He has conquered the chaos of our sin and is making all things new. He invites us out of the turbulent sea of our own rebellion and into the safe harbor of His grace. And He is fitting us for a new creation, a world where the sea is no more (Rev. 21:1), not because water is bad, but because the chaos and separation it represents will be gone forever. In its place will be a world filled to overflowing, not with water, but with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. A world where God's wisdom is on full display, and where His people will delight and play in His presence forever.