Throwing Dice ... Drawing Straws

What process do you go through when you're faced with a decision? And so as Christians faced with decisions to be made and dilemmas to go through, we wait on the Lord. We bathe our search and our wait in prayer. We go to the Word and we let it filter through our heart.

We have communion with the Spirit of God who indwells us with that kind of relationship that makes us not only ready to hear it, but ready to do it as we trust in Him as our Sovereign God. And then with courage and obedience and faith and submission, we put our dice away and we follow after God. What process do you go through when you're trying to discern God's will? We sometimes seek to learn God's will as if it's a game of chance, don't we? Maybe we draw straws or come up with some test to learn God's will.

But the tools for discovering God's will are not mystical. In today's message from our Vintage Wisdom Library, Stephen Davey takes you to the book of Acts. He's going to encourage you to get rid of the straws and the dice and start making use of the proper tools God makes available for discovering His will. Here's Stephen with his message, Throwing Dice, Drawing Straws. We return this morning to our study in the book of Acts chapter 1 verse 14.

If you'd turn there. Acts chapter 1 verse 14. These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. And at this time Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren, a gathering of about 120 persons was there together. Brethren, Peter says, the scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was counted among us and received his portion in this ministry.

Now Luke adds this parenthetical commentary. Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all who were living in Jerusalem so that in their language that field was called hakaldama, that is, field of blood. For it is written in the book, Peter continues, of Psalms, let his homestead be made desolate and let no man dwell in it. That's from Psalm 69.

And his office, let another man take. That's from Psalm 109. Now we know that Judas, according to the gospel account, went out and hung himself. According to Matthew, it is Luke's parenthetical remark here that fills in the rest of the story.

Without telling us how, we learn that the rope evidently broke perhaps or some have suggested he hung himself near a cliff and the branch broke. Whatever happened we're not sure, but this tells us that his body by then distended, eventually fell from where he had hung himself, and he burst open in the middle, adding more insult to his action of betraying the Lord. One of the saddest biographical phrases related to Judas is in verse 25. Look there, it says, this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. Now while the choices of Judas and the decisions he made were known to God, back to the point where those choices and decisions were part of God's sovereign plan of the Son's betrayal and denial, this passage emphasizes the rather awesome tragic consequences of personal choice, that is in choosing not to follow Jesus Christ. You have as a context and backdrop 120 people in this upper room who are choosing to give their lives to the Savior. They are choosing to put their lives on the line, and we have in that context the phrase, here is one who did not choose to continue with the Lord.

In fact, the phrase, he turned aside to go to his own place. Peter says, in effect, Judas belonged to hell. There is a possessiveness of hell to those who reject Christ. He says hell belonged to Judas. And what an awful, frightening thought to think that those who reject Jesus Christ will one day go to the place of their own choosing. They will belong to hell.

Hell will belong to them. Now that Judas has gone to the place of his own choosing, Peter, in an attempt to fulfill scripture that he quotes from the book of Psalms, two Psalms, they bring up this agenda item. They need the Lord's guidance in replacing Judas with another apostle Paul. You might wonder, as I did at the beginning of the week as I began to study this passage, why didn't they elect the apostle Paul? Should they not have waited until he was supernaturally called as it were by the Lord on that Damascus road? Should he have been that 12th apostle?

I don't believe so, although I did an awful lot of reading to come to that conclusion. I won't bore you with all of the details, but I think it would be helpful to remember in answer to that question that the 12 apostles that they are trying to replace, at least the 12th here, were primarily the messenger, the apostle to the 12 tribes of Israel as the gospel would go to the Israelite peoples first. In fact, in Revelation chapter 21, you have a reference to the 12 again.

As the new Jerusalem is created, we read that the walls are created with 12 foundation stones, and on each stone is the name of one of these 12 apostles. It would also help to remember that the apostle Paul called himself in Romans chapter 13 as he distinguished himself from the other 12 as the apostle to the whom? The apostle to the Gentiles. He had a special commissioning, he had a special apostolic, miraculous laden function as he went to the Gentile nations.

Which you'll notice as well as I thought about which would be the correct answer to that question. You discover here in the upper room that they have bathed their activity with prayer. Verse 14 says they were continually devoting themselves to prayer, verse 24, as they chose Judas' replacement.

It says that they prayed. Now, in their process of fulfilling Scripture, we read that they set forth two candidates, we won't talk about or take time to talk about the apostolic qualifications, but there are three of them here. At least let me mention that they had, as you've noticed in the Scripture, that these candidates had to have been a disciple of Jesus, original disciple, that is they had to begin following Jesus at the baptism of Jesus by John, and then they had to be a witness, a personal eyewitness of the resurrection. And Paul, by the way, doesn't even meet those three qualifications. He wasn't with the Lord from the beginning of his baptism with John.

But in their process, two men are qualified. They put them forward, verse 23 tells us. Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these two thou hast chosen to occupy this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.

Now, it'd be easy to miss, but I want you to get out of your pencil or pen and be ready to underline a phrase. There's a very precious phrase here, Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men. You know, it's only Peter who uses that compound Greek word in the New Testament. It'll only appear one other time you could jot in the reference beside that verse, Acts chapter 15, verse 8, as he stands and he preaches to those who have gathered of the God who knows the hearts of all men. The compound word is cardio, from which we get our word cardiology, the heart with nasta or knowledge.

Cardio nasta, he is the heart knower. He is the knower of the heart. What a precious phrase. And I think that if anyone is qualified to stand up and say, God knows the heart, it's Peter.

It was Peter who had earlier stood and said, Oh, Lord, listen to my words. I will never deny you. I will never abandon you. While these other lesser disciples will abandon you, I will never abandon you. And yet the Lord, the knower of the heart, knew that those brave words were covering a heart filled with uncertainty and fear. And that resurrected Lord will in his grace meet with the Apostle Peter by the seashore, and he will say to him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And he will ask him three times. And at the third time, Peter will say, Lord, you know all things.

He knew it now. In spite of my failure, in spite of my betrayal, in spite of my abandonment, in spite of all of that, Lord, you do know my heart. And in there, there is nothing but love for you. Isn't it great to know that he knows our heart?

You are the heart knower, he says. Now, with that in mind, it sort of reflects a little bit differently on his prayer. He is standing in an effect saying, Lord, these two men look good. These two men sound good.

They're answering all the doctrinal questions with the right answers. We don't know which one. But they are both saying they will be an apostle. They are both saying we will follow the Lord faithfully. They are both saying we have a claim to the office which we want to faithfully fulfill. Oh, Lord, we can't tell. Do you know the heart?

Which one do you want? So he asks for the Lord to supersede and overintend, superintend that event. They drew lots for them, verse 26, and the lot fell to Matthias, and he was numbered with the 11 apostles.

We don't know much about Matthias, by the way. Eusebius gives us a little hint, a church father who says that he ministered in Ethiopia faithfully and eventually traveled to Germany where he is supposedly buried and really not too sure. But the question remains, do we cast lots for church leaders today? They did it in the book of Acts. This was a God-ordained and approved method of discovering his will.

Remember, they didn't have the indwelling Holy Spirit that we have today. Casting lots, perhaps in this fashion, was a jar with two stones in it. Their names etched on the stone, and they would shake rapidly that jar and the first stone that flew out would be the lot cast, and Matthias' stone came out, or the stone with his name on it. It is interesting that this event, prior to the spirits indwelling, will be the last biblical record of casting lots.

And I think that there is something in that for us. But back to the question, wouldn't it be easier then to determine the path God wanted you to take if we could just cast lots, you know, take some stones and write the, you know, yes and no, and then put them in a jar and shake them up? Well, when you uncover the agenda of this meeting and discovered that what they really wanted to do, and here's the timeless principle, they wanted to fulfill the Word. There were two Psalms that said, as they now understood the Psalms, Luke told us that Christ opened their understanding of the Word, that Judas was to be replaced.

You need to know that they did not replace him. The Lord did that they asked to superintend upon that choice. There is no such thing as apostolic succession. It is not the choice of man nor the laying on of hands that created these twelve offices.

And these offices created the foundation for the Church, a foundation which has been built upon now for some 1900 years. But the Catholic claim to be the only true Church because they have the apostolic successor in the form of their papal leader is not a valid biblical claim. Well, you go back to this agenda where they want to fulfill the Word. They want the Lord to make the choice. They bathe their desire in prayer. And notice verse 24, Lord, show us which one of these two thou hast chosen. You say, yeah, but they still got to throw dice.

It isn't fair. Well, you're right. In fact, I spent most of the week just thinking about this whole subject. And I have come to the conclusion that we probably do throw dice, draw straws, lay out fleece, whatever you want to call it.

We just, you know, we have our clever ways of designing a test for the Lord to help us determine His will, don't we? Lord, if you want me to take that job offered by that company out in California, if you'll have them call tonight, if the call comes at exactly 8 o'clock p.m., I'll know them to take the job. Anybody ever done that? Something like that?

No hands? We're in a company of liars? There's something that you've got to test, one, then raise this hand. Now understand, and I do, that behind our desire or behind our activity of laying out the fleece and throwing dice, creating these little tests is a sincere desire to want to know what God wants us to do when we're faced with a dilemma or a decision. There is nothing more important than you and I, you and I knowing what the will of God is. Even Paul wrote to the Ephesians in chapter 5 verse 17 and said, don't be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. We don't want to be foolish. We want to take the right step at the right time. What do we do in our dilemma and in our decision-making to know that we are indeed following the hand of God? Well, we're going to camp out in the last 15 minutes just on that thought rather topically, but let me give you some thoughts. Take your notes if you don't have them out. We're going to give you several thoughts to consider and think about that may provide help.

Let me give you three things. First of all, dice throwing most often occurs when we lack time or patience. Fleeces usually appear when we feel we're out of time and we have to know what to do. Trouble is we so often don't give the Spirit of God enough time to work in us that which His will will require of us. And that preparation time is God preparing us so that when His answer comes we're ready to fulfill it. Second, dice throwing schemes are often an avoidance of biblical counsel from others. That is, I just don't like what that preacher is saying and I don't like what my Christian friends are saying.

I think I still want to do this. So I'm going to create my little test. And that test, if fulfilled, overwhelms and negates the counsel of others. Third, dice throwing can be a refusal then to obey the revealed will of God. A young man wants to marry an unbelieving woman, a non-Christian.

He might lay out a series of fleeces in his attempt to look as spiritual as possible. Lord, if she respects my convictions, I'll take that as a sign from you. If she'll come to church with me, I'll take that as a sign.

If she will read the Bible with me or at least appreciate my desire to read the Bible, that'll be a sign, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. While all along the Word in 1 Corinthians 6 has already spoken, do not be yoked together. Don't be joined together with unbelievers.

What fellowship has light with darkness? A woman says, well, I'm living with my boyfriend, but that's okay. We're both Christians. Our combined incomes are allowing us to buy this house and we've been able to give money to the church. And furthermore, we've already verbalized our love to each other and we've already verbally committed to marrying each other. And so God certainly wouldn't be too displeased with our fornication. The Bible has already spoken. Flee, fornication. That happens to be a sin.

Sexual relations outside of marriage is wrong, period. God has spoken. Put your fleece away and obey the revealed will of God. A woman says, well, I think God's leading me to divorce my husband. He makes life miserable for me, doesn't go to church with me. My relationship with the Lord isn't anything like it used to be because of him and his influence. I think God is leading me to leave him. The Word of God has spoken. In the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul writes to the wife, I give instruction, not I, but the Lord, that she should not leave her husband, period.

Put your fleece away. Sometimes our problem is not what we don't know about God's will but with what we do know. So we arrange all sorts of situations to somehow circumvent what the Lord is telling us and there is an underlying disobedience as his Word comes to us, as his Spirit moves within us to his revealed Word.

What about those situations that aren't as clear? I think that's where most of us struggle as believers. They just aren't spelled out in Scripture. There isn't a nice little verse you can go to.

Instead of rolling the dice, let me suggest that you do or believe two things. Number one, begin by believing that God has the sovereign right to take his time and his timing is always perfect. The Word tells us that his thoughts are not our thoughts. That's another way of saying our timing is not his timing.

Even though we often think that his timing is really off, his timing is perfect. And in those dilemmas, when we're facing the need for those decisions, believe that his timing is always perfect. Let me read you something from a gentleman who evidently had a lot of patience with the Lord.

You've heard his name, perhaps his name is George Mueller. He lived about 100 years ago. He ran several orphanages in England and administrated some $25 million through a ministry that we would characterize as a faith ministry. He was often faced with dilemmas needing to make decisions as to the will of God. He writes this. He talks about how he discerned the will of God in what he developed as a journal method.

Now right away you're going to know this isn't going to be a quickie here. A journal method to determine the will of God. He would take a page in his journal and draw a line down the middle and on either side write the pros and cons of that decision. Whatever he could think of that would be right about saying yes and whatever he could think about that would be wrong with saying yes.

He would do those pros and cons in what he called his balance sheet. Again, this isn't fast here, I'm sorry. But this is the way Mueller did it. He wrote these words, nine tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts then are ready to do the Lord's will, whatever it may be. When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what his will is.

We just need to take time. Second, believe by faith that God desires for you to discover his will and that his will is always best. God promised in Philippians chapter two, ladies and gentlemen, that he would work in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Now think about this with me for a moment. Why would God promise to work through us something he now makes impossible to discover?

Why would he tell us he'd work his will through our lives and then say, you can't find my will? That'd be like taking every new Christian and saying, I'm so excited that you've decided to become a Christian. Now son, from here on out, you're on your own. Good luck. It'd be like taking a young man who's decided to be a pilot and putting him in the cockpit of a jet and saying, young man, I'm so excited about your decision to be a pilot.

Have a nice flight. That would be similar to what the Lord would do if he wouldn't give us instruction. So he didn't leave us as orphans. He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell, to illumine. He gave us the completed scripture, which should surround our decisions and bathe our dilemmas with truth. Paul wrote in Colossians in chapter 1 that God's desire for them is they be filled up with the knowledge of his will with spiritual understanding. God wants you to know it as much as you want to know it. Now there are two things that you can believe. Those are two. Now let me give you some things to do.

Is there anything I can do in this dilemma facing this decision? Let me suggest three journeys for you to make to be filled up with the knowledge of his will to take that next step. This, by the way, replaces the lots of that apostolic community once and for all. The first journey is to the Word with an open heart. Psalm 119, 105, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my what? Now that verse is good news, and I like to think of it also as bad news. The bad news is the Lord did not tell us that his word is a high-powered beam that illumines 200 yards of our path in front of us.

Now that disturbs me. I wish he'd done it. He doesn't do it. What did he say his word is? It's a lamp, a reference to a handheld lamp with oil and a wick, and that traveler was able to see enough of his path to do what? To take a step. Oh, and when he was there, he had enough light to do what?

It's frustrating, isn't it? But you see, so often we forget that God is as interested in doing something inside of us as he is in doing something through us. And as we search and seek out his will, it is this process that makes us capable and qualified by his Spirit to accomplish his will.

So you go to the Word, which is that lamp. You hold it in your hand, and those options you're contemplating, those choices you are considering, make sure they do not contradict Scripture. Even if you think the peace of Christ is leading you, even if you think that God is leading you, I want you to know the living Word will never contradict the written Word.

So go here with an open heart. Second, make a journey to wise believers with open accountability. Proverbs chapter 13 verse 14 says, The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, which can divert you from the snares of death.

Later on in that same chapter, Solomon writes in verse 20, Whoever walks with wise men shall become what? Wise. You know who I want to hang around? Wise people. When I need to know what God's will is, you know who I want to go to? A wise believer. Someone maybe a little further down the path or someone who has recently gone through perhaps what you are going through. You go to those wise Christians who take you to the Word, who share with you what God has done in their lives, and then hold yourself accountable. Once you've heard what they have to say, don't say, Well, I don't like what He said.

I think I'll go to somebody else. Until finally you arrive at the doorstep of someone who will agree with you. That isn't wise counsel. So you need to stick with it once you go to those wise believers.

Third, make a journey to your knees in prayer. James 1 says, If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. Do you know what that verse is telling you? He will give wisdom to those who admit they don't have it. I wonder if he'd give us more wisdom, but he doesn't because today we think we've got a little bit of it. Whoever, he implies, is willing to admit that he lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who will then give generously and not rebuke for having asked for that wisdom. In Acts chapter 1 verse 14, they began their stay there with an attitude of continual prayer. You don't get any impression that Peter knows it all.

You don't get any impression from that upper room lot that, boy, we've got a corner here and we're ready. Oh, no, there is an abandonment to know what God knows alone. Verse 24, they end the process of discovery by means of prayer. James will go on further and tell us that we have a problem with what we ask and that what we ask for is simply something that will simply give us more of what we just happen to want or like. He says, you heap it upon your pleasures, your carnal desires.

We're on our knees basically effectively asking God to simply make life more comfortable. He says you can't go to God without pure motives. I like the little legend, the little fable of the man who was granted the opportunity to speak to the Lord. So he was escorted to heaven. He stood before the Lord and had a chance to converse with him, asked a few questions. He said, Lord, I've always wanted to know how long is a million years to you? And the Lord said, it was just a second. He got around later to asking the question, Lord, how much is a million dollars to you? The Lord said, well, that's just a nickel. The man kind of thought and then he had a little sly grin on his face and he said, well, Lord, how about giving me just a nickel? The Lord said, I sure will.

It'll be there in just a second. So we have to go to God with an open heart that says, Lord, even in my request you're going to have to purge my desires and cleanse my thoughts because I'm seeking your will and I need to know what to do about this decision, but I have to admit to you I'm lured by this or that. I'm motivated by this, that or the other. So purify me. Cleanse my heart, oh God. And so as Christians faced with decisions to be made and dilemmas to go through, we wait on the Lord. We bathe our search and our weight in prayer. We go to the Word and we let it filter through our heart. We have communion with the Spirit of God who indwells us with that kind of relationship that makes us not only ready to hear it but ready to do it as we trust in Him as our sovereign God and then with courage and obedience and faith and submission, we put our dice away and we follow after God. The next time you're faced with a big decision or maybe even a small decision, I hope the truth from this message will help you.

It may be that you know someone who's facing a big decision right now. Why not take a moment and share this resource with your friend? There's one easy way to do that. We post a link to each day's lesson on social media so you can share it on Facebook or Twitter. You can link to this resource on our website. You can use the share feature that we have for this and all of Stephen's messages. Not only would it help your friend to receive this suggestion from you, but it also helps our ministry tremendously. Our desire is to reach as many people as possible with the truth of God's Word. When you take a moment to share these messages with other people, that helps spread the good news of God's Word.

We'd be grateful for that. This message comes from our Vintage Wisdom Library. Stephen first preached this to the church he pastors back in 1996. We've gone back to our archives and brought out this series because it's filled with practical wisdom for your heart that we think will encourage you. This series from the book of Acts is called The Harvest Begins and we'll be working our way through it for several weeks. I hope you'll be with us for all of it and I encourage you to join us tomorrow for more wisdom for the heart.