There's nothing that happens outside of the scope of God's ordination. If there were anything that happened outside of the scope of his ordination, God would not be sovereign. He'd be a spectator wringing his hands, hoping that things turn out the way he wants them to turn out, but having no authority or sovereignty over them. When tragedy strikes, where was God? When the promotion is approved or dad gets a pay raise, where was God?
Is God sovereign over some things and the rest is left to chance? Or is God sovereign over everything? I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and this is the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind, as we conclude several days on the topic of God's providence. With those in the United States celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow and many people in other countries setting aside time in the months of October and November for similar days, God's providence should be top of mind for us.
Everything that we have, every good gift comes from God. And for the believer, we know that all things work together for our good.
So even though today is the final day that will be in this series, you can continue studying this important doctrine, this important truth, when you request our Providence resource bundle that features two series, a study guide, and two books. Request yours when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight.
So is it God or chance?
Well, R.C. Sproul will take us to a strange passage in the Old Testament to answer that question. Mentioned a passage that sounds rather strange, perhaps even weird, that's found in the first book of Samuel in the Old Testament. It's a story that has to do with the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of God in Old Testament Israel. And when the Jewish people built their tabernacle in the wilderness and then later the temple in Jerusalem, we recall that in those sacred sites there was a certain section that was called the Sanctus Sanctorum, the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could go one day out of the year on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement.
where the blood of the Lamb was sprinkled upon the throne of God. And it also had significance to the Jews militarily. Remember when Moses and Joshua later were involved in warring against the pagan nations, the Amalekites and other groups of Canaanites and so on, that whenever the Jewish people went into battle against their enemies, the priests would transport the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of God. And when the throne of God went in front of the armies of Israel, the armies of Israel were always victorious. God was on their side and ensured their victory over these nations.
Well, in the first book of Samuel, as I said, we read an account of what took place when the unthinkable happened to Israel. Where after having been defeated in battle against the Philistines and suffering something like 4,000 casualties among their troops, the returning soldiers chagrined, rushed into the camp of the Jewish people, and went to the leader, the spiritual leader, the judge, Eli, and said, let us go back again into battle against the Philistines, only this time, please, let's take the throne of God, the Ark of the Covenant, because if we take the Ark of the Covenant, we will surely win. And so the permission was given, and that night the Ark of the Covenant was brought out of the sanctuary and in to the midst of the military garrison. And when the soldiers saw the arrival of the throne of God, there was this tumultuous, thunderous cheer and ovation. Right across the valley, the Philistine army heard this thunderous roar coming out of the camp of the Jews, and somebody said, what's going on over there?
And one of their spies reported to their leaders saying, God has come in to their camp. And the Philistines were terrified because they had heard the stories of how this tiny bunch of ragtag gypsies had overthrown and conquered the mightiest army in the world at the shores of the Red Sea when God intervened to save them in their conflict with Egypt and with Pharaoh. They had heard of the stunning victories under the leadership of Joshua and others who had preceded them at this time. And so, the Philistines knew that the ark came in. They said, we're in deep trouble.
What the Philistines didn't know was that at that time, Israel was being ruled by this venerable patriarch whose name was Eli. And Eli, as the record tells us, was a godly man. And he had served the people for decades and decades as their spiritual mentor and as their judge. And he was anointed of God, but he had one serious defect, you recall. He had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who followed in their father's footsteps in one regard, in that they entered into the priesthood.
But they did not share his godliness, And they committed spiritually atrocious acts, temple prostitution, all kinds of desecration of their sacred vocation. And the problem is their father never disciplined them. And so God had spoken to Eli through his young charge, Samuel, in a midnight revelation in which he told him that the judgment of God was going to fall upon the house of Eli And when Eli heard it he said that the Lord He realized that he was going to be exposed to this punishment So what happened was when the Jews took the Ark of the Covenant into battle the second time against the Philistines, jubilant now that God was on their side and marching into battle with them, this time the battle turned out different. Instead of the Jews having 4,000 of their soldiers killed, they had 30,000 killed. And not only were 30,000 killed, but to add insult to injury, the Philistines captured the supreme trophy of war.
They captured the Ark of the Covenant and took it back in triumphal procession to their own city-states. And remember the story how the messenger came from the battle scene, ran back to Shiloh. There is Eli, and we are told that he's very old in his late 80s. He's very overweight, and he's blind, and he's seated by the gate where he would issue his judgments. And the messenger came back and tells him, 30,000 of the children of Israel have been killed in this battle, and included among them are your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas.
Still, there's no response from Eli. Eli's worried about one thing, what about the Ark of the Covenant? And then the messenger says, and the Ark has been captured by the Philistines.
Now, when Eli heard that, he fell over in his chair, hit the ground, broke his neck, and died.
Now the messenger goes to the house of Hophni and to his wife, who's pregnant, and he says, here's what happened. We lost the battle. Thirty thousand guys were killed. Your brother-in-law was killed. Your husband was killed.
And your father-in-law just dropped dead. And when she heard that, she fell on the ground and went into labor, delivers this baby. She dies. And this little baby that's left was named Ichabod. Remember the story of Ichabod.
The name Ichabod means the glory has departed, because the baby was born on the day when Israel's greatest glory, the throne of God, was taken into captivity by pagans.
So this was a day of gloom and doom and darkness among the Jews, but at the same time a day of jubilation among the Philistines.
Now, the Philistines were operated according to city-states. They had five kings, and each king was the king over the city, and they had a coalition of these kings. There was the king of Gath and of Ascalon and the various cities there among the Philistines.
So they run back, and they're having a religious celebration because they've defeated the Jews, and they've captured the throne of God.
So they take the ark into their most holy temple, which is a temple devoted to Dagon, the god of the Philistines. And they take the ark of the covenant and place it at the feet of Dagon, in the place of humiliation and of subordination before this pagan idol. And then they go out to spend the night carousing and celebrating their victory over the Jews.
Well, the next morning they come back in, and what happens? They find the statue of their god, Dagon, falling over on its face, and now the statue of Dagon is situated in such a way that it's prostrate before the throne of Yahweh, and the priest said, we've got to fix this before anybody sees it, and so they propped their deity back out and went back out for more partying. The next day they come in, now the statue has not only fallen over on its face, but this time it's smashed into a thousand pieces. And to make matters worse, a plague breaks out in the town, a plague of tumors. And with the plague of tumors comes an infestation of rats.
So the city is besieged with rats, and everybody's getting tumors, and their deity has been disgraced.
So the king of the city says, you know, this isn't such a good idea. I mean, all these calamities are falling on top of our town ever since we brought the throne of Yahweh here into town. I'm going to send this on down to the king down the road.
So he sends it down to the king of Gath, and no sooner does the Ark of the Covenant get to Gath than what happens? They have an outbreak of tumors, and they have an outbreak of rats all over the place.
So for seven months, what happens here is that the kings of the Philistines play musical ark. They keep shipping it from one town to the next, and as they're shipping it back and forth, every time the ark comes into town, the tomers come into town, and every time the tomers come into town, the rats are all over the place in the town.
So this is where the story starts out. After going through all this misery, finally, the kings of the Philistines decide to have a summit meeting, and they gather together. As we read in 1 Samuel 6, it says this. They have a discussion. They bring in their priests and their diviners, and they say, what should we do?
And they said, well, first thing you've got to do is get that Ark of the Covenant, send it back to the Jews. Send it back with a trespass offering. Make five gold tumors and five gold rats. Make this beautiful, wonderful prize. Put it on an ox cart, send it back to the Jews, and let's get rid of the tumors and the rats.
So here comes the passage I wanted you to hear. We read this.
Now then, get a new cart ready with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked, and hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. Take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and in the chest beside it, put the gold objects you were sending back to Him as a guild offering, and send it on its way, but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory towards Beth Shemesh, then the Lord has brought this great disaster upon us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us and that it happened to us by chance. And you get the picture.
What is going on here is a kind of primitive form of a scientific experiment The priests and the leaders of the Philistine nation are undergoing this unspeakable calamity and they don know what causing it Remember I said earlier in this course that the question of providence boils down ultimately to questions of cause, questions of causality. These people said, we're having rats and we're having tumors, and we're not exactly sure what's causing it. We want to know if this is the hand of God in judgment upon us, or if all this stuff has taken place by chance.
So we're going to have a scientific experiment. We're going to take two cows, milk cows, that have just calved and have never been yoked, and we're going to attach this cart to these cows that has this trespass offering and just let it go and see what happens. You see how they've sort of stacked the deck here. They're taking cows that have just calved. What's the natural inclination for a mother cow that's just given birth?
If you take that mother cow away from that calf, and then you let her go free, where's she going to go? You're going to make a beeline to that calf. Or if you take the cow that's never been yoked, and you put a yoke around them, you're struggling against that encumbrance, like they haven't before. We're going to stack the deck here. And if this is really God, we're going to find out if it's God, because if it's really God, then those cows will know what their destination should be, and the hand of providence will guide them to Bechemesh to deliver the Ark of the Covenant back to the Jewish people.
If they don't do that, then we'll know the whole thing has happened by chance.
Now, this story sounds primitive, doesn't it? It's taken place in a time that is, we would say, is the pre-scientific era. that these people are not that sophisticated, they're not PhDs in physics, and so we can sort of be amused at their naivete as they're trying to discern the causes of what's going on around them. But there's something about this story that I find exceedingly contemporary, and that is that it is a discussion that is taking place among people who are clearly atheists. And it may surprise you because the Scriptures just told us that these people had a temple, they had a priesthood, they had a religion, they were engaged in all kinds of religious activities, many of which indeed were superstitious.
Why then would I come to the conclusion that this text would indicate that they were atheists. Let me just backtrack a minute and see if I can make it clear why I assume this is a story about atheists. To illustrate it, let me go back a few years to a situation I had when I was teaching seminary, and I was responsible to teach a course on the theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the 17th century theological document that was the confessional foundation for historic Presbyterianism. And we'd come to the place in the confession where I was going to have to teach chapter 3 the following week, and chapter 3 is entitled, On the Eternal Decrees of God.
Now, among Presbyterians, they know exactly what that means. They said, uh-oh, I want to talk about predestination. And you get a bunch of seminary students together, and there's nothing they enjoy better than to chew over questions about predestination into endless discussions into the night. They love it, and they love to debate that topic.
So I said, I said, next Tuesday night, we're going to take up chapter three of the confession. I have to understand that this particular class was open to the public.
So every one of my students, you know, who had a friend who didn't believe in predestination, they went out and cornered them and grabbed them by the throat and said, you've got to come hear our professor, and he's going to play paladin, and have gun, will travel. He's going to teach us all about predestination.
So we had about 250 students assembled, I guess, that night in the class. And I started the class by reading the opening lines of chapter 3 of the Westminster Confession. I don't have them down verbatim, but I can give you basically what it says there. It starts off by saying something like this, that God has, or does, from all eternity, immutably and sovereignly ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Comma.
Let me say it again. God does sovereignly, immutably, ordain whatsoever comes to pass, comma. I stopped right there at the comma, and I said, now here's this statement. It says that from all eternity, God does freely and sovereignly and immutably ordain every single thing that comes to pass. How many of you believe that.
I mean, this was a Presbyterian seminary, and 200 hands went up in the air proudly wearing the badge of their conviction of the sovereignty.
Well, we believe that. 50 hands didn't go up. I said, okay, how many of you don't believe it? I said, it's okay, nobody's taking down names, and you're not going to get in any trouble, and we're not going to have a heresy trial here, and get out the matches, burn you at the stake. I said, let's be honest, how many of you don't believe that?
About 50 guys raised their hand. We don't believe that. I said, okay. Let me ask another question. How many of you would candidly describe yourselves as atheists?
Again, persecution is going to be taking place here. How many of you would call yourself atheists? Nobody put up their hand. And I immediately went into my Lieutenant Columbo routine. It's just one thing I don't understand here.
I don't understand why those of you who did say that you did not believe in this statement didn raise your hand when I asked you if you were atheist Well I mean there was a hue and cry and I was ready to be lynched I said what are you talking about Just because we don believe that God freely and immutably ordains whatsoever comes to pass you calling us atheists? I said, exactly what I'm calling you. I said, if you don't believe that God ordains everything that comes to pass, bottom line, you don't believe in God. You don't I said, you have to understand that this passage here in the confession, that God ordains everything that comes to pass, there's not anything in that statement that is uniquely Presbyterian. There's not even anything in there that's uniquely Christian.
That statement doesn't divide Presbyterians from Methodists or Lutherans or Anglicans, and it doesn't distinguish between Presbyterians and Islamic religion or Judaism. It's a distinction between theism and atheism. It's a statement simply, a declaration of the absolute sovereignty of God. What I tried to get these young people to see was this, very simply, that if God is not sovereign, God is not God. If there is one maverick molecule in the universe, one molecule running loose outside the scope of God's sovereign ordination, then ladies and gentlemen, there is not the slightest confidence that you can have that any promise that God has ever made about the future will come to pass, or that anything Jesus ever said would happen would in fact happen, because that could be the grain of sand in the kidney of Oliver Cromwell that changes the course of history, that one maverick molecule.
Now, why do I say that about the Philistines? Because the Philistines allowed for the possibility that an event in this world could be caused by chance. They were allowing a maverick molecule. And if they allowed for the possibility of a maverick molecule, and they were allowing for the possibility of a God who's not sovereign. And a God who's not sovereign is a God who is not God.
I might add that after that comma, it says that God does freely and immutably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, but not in such a way as to do violence to human decisions and human freedom, or that He works always apart from secondary causes. We're going to take that question up about how God's sovereignty and His providence works through the choices and the decisions of human beings. We're not finished with this topic. But to say that God doesn't ordain everything is to say that there would be certain things over which God isn't sovereign. I'm not saying that God immediately jumps down and throws your child in front of that car that runs over it and kills it.
But ladies and gentlemen, even in a tragedy like that, the Lord God omnipotent could have reached down and pulled your child out of them and chose not to. He ordained, if you will, to allow it to happen. There's nothing that happens outside of the scope of God's ordination. If there were anything that happened outside of the scope of His ordination, again, God would not be sovereign. He'd be a spectator wringing His hands, hoping the things turn out the way He wants them to turn out, but having no authority or sovereignty over them.
The great message of atheism here is allowing for chance, doing anything. When they let those cows go, they went straight to Bethlehemish. They didn't turn to the left and they didn't turn to the right. And when the people of Israel saw those cows coming and saw the cargo they bore, they screamed, Kabod, the glory of God is back because God demonstrated His sovereignty over the affairs of men. And that He is sovereign should be a great comfort to us.
Nothing is outside His control. This is Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. When I think of God's sovereignty and providence, I often think of the classic hymn, God Moves in a Mysterious Way.
There's this great line in that hymn, behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. Consider the doctrine of God's providence more deeply, hear responses to objections, and explore more of what the Bible has to say when you request our Providence Resource Bundle before midnight tonight. Make your request when you donate at renewingyourmind.org. And this resource bundle featuring lifetime digital access to the complete series you heard from today, along with its study guide, digital access to another series from Dr. Sproul titled Providence, God in Control.
Plus, we'll send you two titles from R.C. Sproul. What does it mean that God is sovereign and does God control everything?
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Sproul will remind us of the importance of thankfulness.
So be sure to join us Thursday here on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.
