Leave Nothing to Chance
At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
The lot is cast into the lap; But the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.
Proverbs 16:33
Let us say that a man rolls a pair of dice, and it comes up snake eyes. We can say, on the strength of this proverb, that God foreordained that result. Before the worlds were fashioned, God had decided that the dice would land that way. God not only decided that soldiers were going to gamble for the Lord’s robe when He was crucified, He had also determined which soldier was going to take that robe away. Every detail of everything that happens in this world is determined by God. The hairs of our head are numbered (Matt. 10:30). A sparrow cannot fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father (Luke 12:6-7).
So does this mean that we can infallibly determine the will of God for our lives by rolling dice on every decision? No, we cannot. If we were to roll the dice, we know that it was determined by God to come up as two threes. What we don’t know is the meaning that should be assigned to this, and we have no way of knowing. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). The meaning of the two threes could be your own assigned meaning, which was that you were supposed to apply to med school. But it might also mean that you were a fool, and God thought it was time to prove it to everybody.
So an employer who has a stack of applications and who settles on one by flipping coins in his office is an employer who deserves everything he gets. But if he has carefully winnowed the applications down to two, and they are both equally qualified, and he decides by flipping a coin, that is a different matter. That is how the disciples chose the replacement for Judas (Acts 1:23).
