Word of Salvation – Vol.26 No.52 – September 1980

 

God or Chance?

 

Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde on Matthew 10:29-31

Scripture Reading: Psalm 104:24-35; Matthew 10:24-33

Belgic Confession, Article 13

 

Two young men save their money and buy a farm in Western N.S.W.  Soon afterwards a long drought sets in, and in a matter of a couple of years they have lost everything.

A young athlete trains for years and years, and makes the Olympic team to Munich in 1972.  But in the big race he is accidentally tripped by another runner and all his efforts seem to have been wasted.

A thirty year old woman is diagnosed with cancer.  The disease lingers on and on and becomes more and more painful.  Nine years later she finally dies leaving a husband and four teenage daughters.

A young girl in her early twenties drives her sports car to see her parents one weekend.  While she is travelling down the highway, a truck changes lanes without warning.  Her little car is crushed, and her own condition is critical.  She’s in a coma for 72 hours.  When she comes to, she is permanently physically handicapped and mentally retarded.

Now all these situations are taken from real life, but what do you think they have in common?  Surely this, that something sad and tragic happens that is beyond the person’s control.  A misfortune occurs and there is nothing that the person could do about it.  Now what do you make of situations like this?  How can they be explained?

The Christian and the non-Christian answers to these questions will be radically different.

First of all, let us consider the non-Christian answers to our problem, and here we have two schools of thought: Firstly, there are those who attribute everything to chance.  And often enough in our everyday language we speak of things happening by chance and by accident.  But chance of course can go either way.  You can have good luck, but you could also have bad luck or hard luck.  It can be your lucky day, your lucky star, your lucky number.  Or maybe your luck has run out, but then at least you’re lucky enough to live in “The Lucky Country”.

Well, it’s perhaps not wrong to say that something happened by chance.  Even Jesus used the expression in the story of the Good Samaritan: “And by chance a certain.  priest was going down that road…!”  And yet in our society there is so much emphasis on luck and chance, that it betrays a view of life which is no longer Christian.

And then there’s a second and very common answer that non-Christians will come up with today, and that is that they will explain things in terms of fate. Fate is an impersonal force that controls your life, and there is nothing that you can do about it.  “Whatever will be will be..!”  Your life is written in the stars, and there is nothing you can do to alter it.

So there you have it: chance or fate – and often the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other.  Sometimes the emphasis is on fate and at other times it is on chance.  We see the first in the fascination with horoscopes today.  Christians too have been sucked into this craze and take the stars quite seriously.  But if chance isn’t the answer and if fate isn’t, then what is the answer?  What would you say to the mother of four who is dying of cancer?  What can you say to the two brothers who have lost everything?  And what about the athlete and the girl in the accident?  And what do we make of the unexpected events good and bad that happen in our lives almost every day?  How do we explain those happenings that others call fate or luck or chance?

As Christians we believe that all of life is in the hand of God, and that is what we call Providence.  In article 13 the Belgic Confession explains it like this:

“We believe that the same good God, after He had created all things, did not forsake them or give them up to fortune or chance, but that He rules and governs them according to His holy will, so that nothing happens in this world without His appointment…!”

Now that is strong language:  “Nothing happens in this world without His appointment.”  You see, nothing happens apart from God.  God is not detached.  He is involved.  He is not remote; He is near.

Jesus teaches us this truth so simply in our text:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will.  But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear not therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.”

Here we see God’s loving attention to the minutest details of our lives.  He knows how many hairs we each have.  I read recently that on the average we have 140,000 hairs on our head – for some of the men here it may, of course, be considerably less.  And to think that God has counted how many hairs there are on each of our heads!  We would never even think of doing such a thing.  But when God knows all the hairs on our heads, I would say that it means he cares for us more than we care for ourselves,

And then Jesus also teaches that “not one sparrow shall fall to the ground without your Father’s will.”  In the original that last phrase literally reads “without your Father.”  And there are various ways you could translate those words – “outside of His will”, “without His consent”, “without His leave.”  Not even something as insignificant as the death of a sparrow happens apart from God’s will.  And if that is so, how important must be the death of one of his children.  If He doesn’t even forget the falling of the sparrow, then how much more will He remember His children.  If what happens to the sparrow falls within the will of God, then how much more what happens to us.  The words of Jesus in our text were designed to give comfort and courage to His people.  And yet it’s so easy for us to take these comforting words quite the other way.  “If even the death of a sparrow and the falling out of one of my hairs is encompassed in the will of God, then doesn’t that make God responsible for the sin and the evil in the world?  If nothing happens without God then shouldn’t God be blamed for the misery and suffering all around us?

As Christians we often struggle and grapple with questions like this.  How could this sorrow, this heartache of mine be God’s will?  How could this tragedy be the will of God?  A minister’s wife, by the name of Ruth Vaughin, has written a very sensitive book on questions just like this.  It’s called: Even When I Cry.  Ruth’s mother had been ill for a long time.  Then she went into a coma, and in spite of fervent prayer by her relatives she was in the coma 13 months, and then she died.

Then Ruth writes: “It all has been God’s will”, comforted a minister who should have known better.  My anger rose.  God’s will that my mother be stricken by disease?  God’s will that she be crippled for years?  God’s will that she lose her sight and voice?  God’s will that she lie unconscious for thirteen months?  God’s will that she die in a sore infested body?  God, whose name is love, whose nature is compassion, whose spirit is goodness, willed all this?  God permitted all this to happen: disease, incapacitation, death.  But I cannot believe that God willed these years of her pain.  Such willing would not be consistent with His nature.” (pp 79-80).

I’m sure that every Christian who has seen a loved one suffer can sympathize with feelings like this.  Perhaps you can even identify with such feelings.  And yet even such suffering is not outside the will of God.  Even if God does not will it directly He still wills to permit it.  In this regard some people speak of the permissive will of God.

Think of the words of our text: “Not one sparrow will fall to the ground without your Father’s will!”  And what does Jesus have in mind when He says this?  He’s thinking about His disciples how they will suffer, how they will be persecuted, how some of them will be martyrs for His sake.

Earlier in Matthew 10 He is predicting all kinds of troubles for His followers: “They will deliver you up to councils.”  “They will flog you in their synagogues.”  “You will be dragged before governors and kings.”  And that’s not all: “Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against their parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” (vs.21).  And it is at times like this that they will be tempted to think that this has nothing to do with God; He has forgotten them; He doesn’t care and what they are going through cannot be His will.

And it is when they think thoughts like this that they are to remember the comforting words of our text: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will  But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.”

In other words: God is near.  God is involved.  God cares.

And yet even so for some people all of this is still cold comfort: “How can the suffering, which I see and I experience, be part of God’s will or how can He even permit it?  How can a good and loving God will or permit such things?”

Martin Luther once said that we can think of God in such a way that He becomes a villain.  And that’s a trap that we certainly don’t want to fall into.  But how can we avoid it?

Many of you are familiar with the books by Joni Eareckson, a young woman who broke her neck in a diving accident when she was 17.  For a long time she battled with the problem of a good God who allows evil.  “Is it true that God grants Satan permission to spread disease?” she asks.  If God allows Satan to act sinfully and cause disease (as in the case of Job) then doesn’t that make God a sinner?

Listen to her answer:

“Satan intends the rain which ruins a church picnic to cause the people to curse their God; but God uses the rain to develop their patience.  Satan plans to hinder the work of an effective missionary by arranging for him to trip and break a leg; God allows the accident so that the missionary’s patient response to the pain and discomfort will bring glory to Himself…….!”

Satan schemed that a 17 year old girl named Joni would break her neck, hoping to ruin her life; God sent the broken neck in answer to her prayer for a closer walk with Him and uses her wheelchair as a platform to display His sustaining grace.

As a friend once said: ‘God sends things, but Satan often brings them.’  Praise God that when Satan causes us illness or any calamity we can answer him with the words Joseph answered his brothers who sold him into slavery, ‘As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good’ (Gen.50:20)”. “A Step Further” (pp.140-141).

Here’s a girl who is paralysed from the neck down; she is confined to a wheel-chair; she also understands God’s sovereignty, and she certainly doesn’t think of God as a villain,

And if you are still not convinced, not convinced that in spite of the evil and sin and pain in the world, God is still loving and good, then I invite you to take a fresh look at the cross of Calvary.  It was there that Jesus, who is God in the flesh, subjected Himself to the worst evils and pains that Hell could inflict upon Him.  Think about it as I read a contemporary poem that puts it so well.  It is called “This is the True God”.

His holy fingers formed the bough
Where grew the thorns that crowned His brow;
The nails that pierced His hands were mined
In secret places He designed,

He made the forest whence there sprung
The tree on which His body hung,
He died upon a cross of wood,
Yet made the hill on which it stood.

The sun which hid from His its face
By His decree was poised in space;
The skies which darkened o’er His head.
By Him above the earth were spread.

The spear which spilt His precious blood
Was tempered in the fires of God;
The grave in which His form was laid
Was hewn in rocks His hands had made.

The only way I can make sense of evil in this world is because my God experienced the worst of it.  The only way I can understand sin is that Jesus Christ became sin for me when he died on the cross.  So whatever may happen to the child of God, he will ultimately come through with the words of the Psalmist:

“The Lord is good; He is my rock,
and there is no unrighteousness in Him.” (Ps.  92:15).

Therefore, brothers and sisters, “Fear not, for you are of more value than many sparrows,”

Amen.