Day a visiting stranger grasped Abraham by the arm and pulled him away from his campfire. Look up into the sky, he said. As Abraham’s eyes adjusted to the night and scanned the universe, the visitor said, Count the stars — if you can! Then he added, So many will your children be. Long afterwards, Jeremiah was holding an open-air meeting in the courtyard of his prison in Jerusalem. He related the word of the Lord, I will make the descendants of Jacob and David my servant as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore.
Count the stars, if you can
These two Bible passages — and a few others like them — are truly remarkable for this reason: from earliest pre-history until modem times, human observers like the Chinese, the Greeks and the American Mayas, counted the stars and agreed that there are about 3,000 of them. For that is the number of stars that can be resolved by the naked eye on a moonless night in clear desert air. Only with the development of modem telescopes has it become evident that they cannot be counted. The author of a science text that my students use thinks he is revealing something new and startling when he compares the number of the stars to all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. Scripture made that comparison three thousand years ago. What an utterly astonishing and miraculous thing it is that the stars should be there at all for Abraham to see! And it is an even more outrageously improbable chance that there could have been a tiny, intelligent creature called Abraham looking up to appreciate them.
The mysterious force of gravity
My very existence depends on gravity. Rationally, or shall we say as a `chance’ phenomenon, gravity is absolutely inexplicable. It is absurdly weak. Newton’s famous gravitational constant is a ludicrously tiny number, 10.38. But it is exactly right. If it was off by only a couple of those noughts, I could not exist. Yet, here is an amazing fact: despite the extraordinary weakness of the force of gravity, and the additional fact that it decreases rapidly with increasing distance from any material object, it never falls to zero anywhere in the universe. “The incredible weakness of gravity turns out to be necessary for the existence of stars,” explains that science text. Moreover, for stars to exist, so many other parameters must also be so “carefully tuned” that, when that author does his math, he admits that the probability or likelihood (or whatever term you want) of any of the stars existing by chance (that is, not for some kind of intelligent purpose) is just so low as to be mathematically incalculable, and it does look like “it might have been done by a god who created the world in this way.” Then with his back against the wall, and his logic forsaking him, he tells us that since there cannot possibly be a God, the universe must be the result of some random process “analogous to natural selection”! The great Newton said that if you see purpose and you call it chance, you really must be blind.
Chance? No way. We may not be able to count the stars, but, as David sang, the Almighty not only counts them, but calls them each by name. Not even a baby sparrow tumbles out of its nest without the great Creator knowing. And we are of more value than many sparrows. So there’s no such thing as chance at all in your life and mine. There is just a host of opportunities put in our way by a merciful Father, opportunities to grasp for us and for His glory. From all this swells the breadth and depth and height, indeed all the mighty cosmic dimensions, of Ephesians, chapter 1.
Tiny chances, eternal purposes
Remember all those amazing incidents in the Bible? Ruth “chanced” to glean in Boaz’ field. “By chance” the priest came upon the wounded Jew on the Jericho road. An insomniac Ahasuerus just turned to the right page in the right library book at the right time. He came in from his garden walk just at the crucial moment. The Ishmaelite traders arrived just in time to buy Joseph from his murderous brothers. Anna “coming in that instant” found the promised Saviour. Of course, it really wasn’t chance at all. It was providence, divine purpose, the force of spiritual gravity — all the time. Sometimes I like to imagine myself as Simon of Cyrene. Why on earth did that brutal legionary pick on me? After all, I am only a tourist. But Mark 15:21 tells you why two of his sons were to believe!
In God’s universe tiny ‘chances’ work mighty and eternal purposes. A dollop of swill into a pigpen sent a sinner back to his Father. A bucket of water for a grumpy camel brought beautiful Rebekah a godly husband. Nathaniel’s nap under a fig tree led to a lifelong commitment to the Son of God. Dilly-dallying by a well changed one Samaritan woman’s sordid life for ever. That is how God works! A physicist once suggested that theoretically one butterfly’s fluttering can become a hurricane. Certainly, a serious scientific paper was published proposing that the wind shear from semi-trailers passing on a Texas highway can trigger deadly tornadoes. There’s nothing trivial in God’s universe. Much more important, there is nobody who is trivial, either. I am sure you realize that one reason why they nailed Jesus of Nazareth to a tree was because he dared, yes dared, to tell people that the desperate prayer of the blind guttersnipe Bartimaeus was far more important to God than the hypocritical posturing of the scoundrel priest Caiaphas each year in the Holy of Holies. And furthermore, that he, Jesus, was going to make sure that his friends, a handful of humble folk, would carry that ‘good news’ to every creature under heaven. Jesus, you see, even then understood how God’s universe works. No wonder the self-righteous people hated him! But it follows that your place at this memorial table is just as important as that of anyone else on earth.
The power of prayer
I used to think that prayer was some kind of helpful option in a godly life. Now, gazing heavenward as Abraham did, I know better. Prayer is as basic to God’s universe as the stars, and as fundamental a force as gravity. Prayer never falls to zero anywhere in the universe. Absurdly weak according to the math tables, it can move mountains, and “nothing shall be impossible unto you.” It is the power that binds the universe of the Spirit in One. Jesus demonstrated that awesome truth — on the mountain top, in the garden, and above all, yes above all, on the cross of shame. Nailed there, he prayed for me, and I can only bow in wonder before his Father for answering that prayer. If one man, on the top of Carmel with his face between his knees, can fill the heavens black with clouds and wind, what might the united prayers of fifty thousand Christadelphians achieve? Or fifty? Yes, or five?
There is no ‘chance,’ my brethren. There is only divine power, sustaining sparrows, sinners and saints. When Solomon spoke of “chance” he was just speaking of surface appearances, as he recognized thirty-six verses later: the ways of our hearts, all our eyes behold, sorrows, joys, childhood, youth, everything every day – for all these things God will bring us into judgment. Yes, said our Lord, even every idle word any man may speak. That is to say, God will assess how we have turned fleeting chances into eternal purposes. Our lives are not the sport of chance. Our angels are beholding the face of God. They are purposive spirits ministering to those who are the heirs of salvation, strong on behalf of those who love the Lord. All things work together for good to those who are the called according to His eternal purpose.
The purpose of His will
In Jerusalem, on the ‘pavement’ where our sinless King was condemned to die, you can still see a Roman game of chance etched into the stones. It was a kind of Russian roulette called Basilike, ‘the King.’ But God did not leave the fate of His beloved Son to the roll of a ball or the throw of dice. This table reminds us that He planned your salvation and mine before the foundation of the world. We have read Ephesians 1. At the audacity and magnificence of Paul’s cosmic concepts we can only gasp in awe. Its theme is purpose. Its culmination is God’s glory. In him (Jesus the Lord) we were also chosen, having been elected according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we might be for the praise of his glory. With Paul, we pray also today that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One