Job CCCXXXIX

 Job 41:12-22, “I will not conceal his limbs, his mighty power, or his graceful proportions. Who can remove his outer coat? Who can approach him with a double bridle? Who can open the doors of his face, with his terrible teeth all around? His rows of scales are his pride, shut up tightly as with a seal; one is so near another that no air can come between them; they are joined one to another, they stick together and cannot be parted. His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth. Strength dwells in his neck, and sorrow dances before him.”

You can tell when someone is passionate about a given topic and when they’re just phoning it in. It doesn’t take long to conclude whether the individual in question knows what they’re talking about or they’re just hoping a pointless word salad absent substance will be enough to convince you of their imagined body of knowledge.

Whether it’s birds, cars, the different species of wildlife in a given area, or regional history, someone’s true passion for the topic shines through, whether they mean for it to do so or not. I’ve heard plenty of sermons where passion was so lacking that it was obvious the preacher was just doing his job. Scroll down the iPad, going through the bullet points of a canned sermon, sprinkle in a joke or two, and take up the offering at the end. Another week, another paycheck, and to them that’s all that it was: a job.

The crowd’s reaction, or lack thereof, was of little concern, as were the raised eyebrows when they tried to imply something the biblical text obviously did not allude to; but they pressed on, delivered their twenty-five-minute sermon, unperturbed or unaffected by the absence of impact or spiritual unction.

I’ve also had the honor of being in services where the preacher was passionate about God, the things of God, the ways of God, and the Word of God. You could see the passion in their demeanor, in their eyes, and in the words they spoke, giving them the respect they deserved as being God’s message to His creation, inspired, profound, and impactful, because they followed the urging of the Holy Spirit and not some words they’d scratched on a piece of paper.

You can always tell when there is passion behind an action, and in God’s detailing of the leviathan, one can’t help but notice how passionate He is about His creation. It’s akin to starting up a conversation with a bona fide car guy, who can go on for days about how an engine works, and why you need to change the spark plugs because two out of four are misfiring. While you’re trying to figure out what a spark plug is, he’s painstakingly explaining combustion to you, and all you can do is stand there, listen, and absorb.

Nothing God has created, nothing He spoke into existence, was thrown together haphazardly. There was no moment during the process of creation when God shrugged His shoulders and said, good enough, that’ll do, or the oft-repeated, perfect is the enemy of the good. When God beheld what He had created and said, “it is good,” His version of Good is perfection, for nothing else would suffice.

Take any of God’s myriad of creations, whether a beast of the air, a beast of the sea, and everything in between, and He can tell you why He fashioned them the way He did, all the detail that went into it, and how it was created in such a way as to coexist with the ecosystem to which it was assigned.

But sure, it was all an accident, a serendipitous quirk of the universe where everything from a microbe to a cell to chromosomes to behemoths and leviathans had a purpose and was created with such specificity as to boggle the mind. It’s easy enough to say something that dumb, but far harder to back it up with any reason or logic.

Even those who lean on the crutch of evolution to explain the majesty of creation can’t come up with a viable explanation as to how everything evolved so perfectly. You’ve never seen a zebra with gills, or a tiger with flippers, a dolphin with hooves, or a seal with horns, but sure, it was all by accident, perfectly aligned and put together, but by accident.

Absence of evidence exists only in the minds of those who refuse to open their eyes and acknowledge God’s design in all that surrounds them. It is the refuge of the dull-witted, and those who suffer from god complexes, because to admit that there is One greater than them, One who created them, and put bone upon bone, and sinew atop those bones, One who is responsible for the spark of life that animates them, is to acknowledge God Himself, and be confronted with the reality that one day they will have to stand before Him.

It is unlikely that Job ever saw a leviathan up close and personal, but God’s vivid description of His creation paints a word picture so clear that one can close their eyes and imagine the size, scope, majesty, and ferocity of this beast of the deep. This wasn’t a sketch or an outline; it wasn’t an ink blot where one can imagine whatever they will if they stare at it long enough, but a detailed account of what went into its creation and the minute details that went into its forging.

We may sing songs about serving an awesome God, and about Him being a God of wonder, but can our feeble minds ever truly grasp the extent of His majesty? Are we even able to perceive His greatness while in these husks of flesh? We can get a glimpse from time to time, but as far as the fullness thereof, I do believe we fall short. We worship Him because He is worthy, far beyond what we can comprehend, and the knowledge that this infinite, indescribable, omnipotent God loves us should be more humbling still.       

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.