The following is an excerpt from the sermon “The Pleasure of God in His Creation” by Rev. John Piper, Feb 8, 1987, Desiring God Ministries.
My children’s Ranger Rick magazine arrives in my house once a month… It’s one of the most important theological journals I get. That’s a true statement. I’m sitting here on the couch..and I read about the European water spider. Did you read about that one?
This little spider goes up to the top of the water and he does a somersault to catch a bubble of air. He holds this little bubble of air over his tummy where his breathing holes are and he swims to the bottom of the lake and while he’s breathing on this bubble of air, he weaves a little silken screen and he drops the bubble under there.
And he swims up fast and does another somersault and gets another bubble and he brings it back down. He fills up this little silk screen until there’s a nice balloon of air and then he lives in there, and he has his babies in there, and he reaches out into the water and gets his food from this little bubble of air!
Who ever heard of such a thing! And I think, as I’m sitting there with my mouth open reading this magazine, God comes down and he sort of laughs and smiles at me and he says, “Yeah! And do you know I’ve been enjoying that for 10,000 years before anybody knew it existed!”
And there are a million such things, ten million such things, that man has never seen that God designed in the most extraordinary way just to enjoy—because there they are in their magnificent complexity and marvelous intricacy….
Or take diatoms, for example. (This is Ranger Rick again.) You know what diatoms are? Little invisible plants. And if you take a spoonful of a lake in Minnesota—a little teaspoonful—do you know how many diatoms you’ve got? One million diatoms in this little spoonful of water!
And there are 10,000 species of diatoms. (I can’t imagine anybody cataloging species of invisible plants!) And do you know they photograph these things in Ranger Rick in color and they’re all different shapes and sizes and colors. They’re magnificent! And nobody can see them but God!
Do you know what they’re doing down there? They’re making tons and tons of oxygen so fish can breathe so you can go fishing. That’s what wisdom is. Wisdom is, so you can go fishing, he invents diatoms! I mean, it is just amazing how God has put this world together. It should just stun us to silence as we look at how the world fits together. “In wisdom he has made them all….” [Psalm 104:24]
God does mean for us to be awed and stunned by his creation, but not for its own sake. He means for us to say, “If the work of God’s hands is so abundant with power, and wisdom, and grandeur and beauty, what must God be like? What must the Creator be like if the flinging out of his fingers is so majestic, and grand, and great and glorious!”