A child was born in Israel. This child was extraordinary if for no other
reason than the name he was given. This baby was named Ichabod. Of course, if you remember your Old Testament
history, you know the circumstances of that situation. In Hebrew, the word for the glory of God,
the weightiness, the significance, the heaviness of God is the Hebrew term kavod or kabod. And here is a child who is named "Ichabod,"
which means literally "the glory of God has departed," the glory of God has gone, it's
left. Now, you can imagine a little boy growing
up in Israel, going to school, to the synagogue and the teacher says, "What's your name, child? And, the child said, "My name is 'the glory
of God has gone.'" The glory of God has gone. Well, why? What happened? Well, to understand that incident in Jewish
history, that episode in the Old Testament, we have to just go back a couple of chapters
earlier, where during the time of the leadership of the Jewish people of the venerable judge
Eli, a crisis came to the nation. The traditional military enemy of Israel were
the Philistines, and the Philistines came in battle against the Jewish people during
the reign of Eli. And the Scripture tells us in the fourth chapter
of 1 Samuel that in this battle, the Philistines drew up to meet Israel, and the battle spread
and Israel was defeated before the Philistines, and four thousand Jewish men died in the conflict. And so, a messenger came back to Shiloh, came
back to the central sanctuary and reported to the leaders and the elders there and to
Eli himself of this humiliating defeat in battle. And the soldiers and the messengers came with
an urgent request. They said to the judge, they said to Eli,
"Eli, let us go back again into battle against the Philistines, only this time please let
us take the ark of the covenant with us." Sort of an Old Testament Raiders of the Lost
Ark. You remember that the ark of the covenant
was the most sacred piece of furniture in the tabernacle and later in the temple. The ark was that chest where the cherubim
adorned the sides of it, and the ark was the throne of God. At its cover was the mercy seat where the
blood of the sacrifices were spread. And inside this chest was contained the tablets
that Moses had brought down from Sinai, Aaron's rod and so on. This was the sacred vessel of all sacred vessels
to the Jewish people. And there were moments in previous history
that when the Jews went into battle against their enemies, when the priests carried the
ark of the covenant, the throne of their God, Yahweh, before them, whenever God's throne
marched into battle, the Jewish soldiers were always victorious. And so now after losing to the Philistines,
they come and they press their urgent request upon Eli, "Let us go back, and let us go with
the ark of the Covenant." And he said, "Alright." And so, the ark was brought into the Jewish
camp. Listen to the response of the people. "And it happened as the ark of the covenant
of the Lord came into the camp that all of Israel shouted with a great shout, so that
the earth itself resounded." When the troops who were demoralized and had
just gone through this ignominious defeat saw the approach of the throne of God, they
were throwing their hats in the air, they were hurling their weapons in joy, and with
one voice they screamed in acclamation. And when the Philistines heard the noise of
the shout, they said, "What does the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews
mean?" And then they understood that the ark of the
Lrod had come to the camp, and the Philistines were afraid, and they said, "God has come
to this place. Woe unto us! Nothing like this has happened before. Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us from the hands of this
mighty God? Isn't this the mighty God who defeated the
chariots of Egypt?" And they were terrified. But there was nowhere for the Philistines
to retreat. And so the battle took place. And this time, of course, the outcome was
different. In this battle, not four thousand Jewish soldiers
were killed, but thirty thousand Jewish men were slain. Once again the Philistine host was victorious,
and they captured the ark of the covenant. And in this self-same battle, the two sons,
the undisciplined sons of Eli perished on the battlefield. And so a man from the tribe of Benjamin was
dispatched to carry back the news of the defeat to Shiloh to Eli. And Eli sat by the gate, and the Bible tells
us that he was 98 years old and that he was obese. He was massively overweight, and he had become
blind in his old age. And as he sat there listening for some word
of the outcome of this battle, the messenger came up to him and reported the news. And the man said to Eli, "I am the one who
came from the battle line. Indeed, I escaped from the battle line today." And Eli said, "How did things go, my son?" And the one who had brought the news answered
and said, "Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there has also been a great slaughter
among the people, and your two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead." How's that for a report? "We lost the battle, thirty thousand slain
and Eli, it included your two sons Hophni and Phinehas." But even with this grim aspect of the message,
there was still no visible response from Eli until the messenger added, "And the ark of
the covenant has been taken into the camp of the Philistines." Verse 18, "It came about when he mentioned
the ark of God that Eli fell over backward from his seat backward beside the gate, his
neck was broken, and he died." In the next verse it says his daughter-in-law,
Phineas' wife, was pregnant and was about to give birth. And the messenger comes to Phineas' wife,
and what does he say to her? He announces to her, "Your husband was killed
today, your brother-in-law was killed today, and your father-in-law has just dropped dead,
and the ark of the covenant has been captured by the enemy." When she heard that announcement, she fell
on the ground, went into labor, bore a child and immediately upon producing this child,
she died. And somebody came and picked up this infant
who was born in the midst of such calamity and said of the child, "His name is Ichabod. The ark of the covenant, the throne of God,
the glory of God is gone. This is a day that will live in infamy." Meanwhile, as there is mourning and grief
and consternation in the household of Israel, back among the chiefs and the princes and
the kings of the Philistines, there is tremendous rejoicing. We read in chapter 5 that the Philistines
took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Now, you remember that the Philistines were
a nation that were made up chiefly of five city states, and each of these great cities
was ruled by a king. The cities of Gath, of Ashkelon, of Ashdod,
and so on were the great cities of the Philistines. And so when the ark was captured first of
all, it was taken to the city of Ashdod, and there in triumphal procession, this trophy
of military victory was taken to the temple of Dagon. Dagon was the chief deity of the Philistines. And everyone went out to celebrate. And when they took the ark of the covenant
into the temple of Dagon, they set the throne of God, of Yahweh, at the feet of the statue
of Dagon, symbolizing what? The preeminence of the Philistine god who
now lords it over the God of the Israelites. And they left the ark in the temple and went
out to celebrate. They celebrated all night and in the morning
when the priest came in to the temple of Dagon, they were horrified with what they found. They looked, and behold, the statue of Dagon
had fallen over on its face and was now in a position of obeisance, prostrated at the
base of the throne of Yahweh. And they scrambled to correct that indignity,
and they propped up their statue again in the position of superiority and went back
for some more feasting and celebration. They came in the next morning, and they found
the statue of Dagon not only tilted over on its face, but this time smashed into a million
pieces. And one of the southern Philistines looked
at that and said, "Daag-gone!" Well to make matters worse, suddenly a plague
broke out in Ashdod. Now, we don't know exactly the nature of that
plague. One translation of the Bible describes the
plague as a plague of tumors. Another one describes it as a plague of emerods,
but those that are more graphic in their interpretation of the Hebrew say that it was a plague of
hemorrhoids. God has a sense of humor. I would have like to have owned the Preparation
H franchise among the Philistine towns at that point. But this terrible plague of hemorrhoids attacks
the people of Ashdod. And in the wake of this plague of tumors comes
a plague of rats, a rapid infestation of rodents crawling everywhere and bringing disease and
destruction to the city. And when this happened, the king of Ashdod
began to wonder, is there a connection between the calamity that is befallen our city and
the presence of the Jewish throne of God? And I don't know, but he decided to make a
gift of the throne of God to the king of the closest city in Philistia. And so for several months, what happened in
Philistia was the Philistine kings played musical ark. They shift it to Gath. They shift it to Ashkelon. They shift it all around the nation, and everywhere
the ark of the covenant went, the plague of tumors broke out, and the plague of rats broke
out, until the kings of the Philistines had all of this stuff that they could stand, and
they decided to have a summit meeting, and they called a great council where they met
together. And they called in their magicians, they called
in their priests, they called in their leaders and they said, "What are we supposed to do
in these circumstances?" The Philistines called on their priests, saying,
"What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we shall send it to its place?" And the priests and the magicians said, "If
you send away the ark of the God of Israel, don't send it back empty. But you shall surely return to Him a guilt
offering." If you want these plagues to stop, if you
want these tumors and these rats to go away, you not only have to take this sacred vessel
back to Israel, but you must take with it a guilt offering to appease the wrath of Yahweh. And the kings said, "Well, what kind of a
guilt offering shall we send?" And the priests said, "You shall fashion five
tumors of gold and five golden rats, pure gold, and send them back as a peace offering
to God. And then this instruction followed, "Now therefore,
take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never been a yoke and hitch
the cows to the cart, and take their calves home away from them. And take the ark of the LORD and place it
on the cart, put the articles of gold which you will return to him as a guilt offering
in a box by its side, and then send it that it may go, and watch it." Watch where it goes. We're going to put a test out there. Before I tell you about the test, let's stop
for a second, recap, see what we've learned already about the Philistines. Well so far, we've learned that the Philistines
had military strength. We've learned that the Philistines were a
religious people, but that their religion was a religion of idolatry. And what we're going to learn in just a moment,
that in spite of the fact that they had all of the trappings of religion, despite the
fact that they had a priesthood, despite the fact that they had a temple, despite the fact
that they believed in certain deities, bottom line, the Philistines were practical atheists. That is, in theory, they believed in religion
and in God, but in actual practice, fundamentally, they were atheists. Now how do I know that? Well, I know it from what comes next in the
story. Let's look at it. "Send away this cart with the milk cows and
watch it. If it goes up by way of its own territory
to Beth-Shemesh, then He (that is, God) has done this great evil. But if not, then we shall know that it was
not His hand that struck us, but that it happened to us by chance." Let's take a practical look at things. Let's put the situation to the test. We don't know whether this terrible outbreak
of the plague of rats and of tumors was merely a coincidence, a fortuitous event, or whether
it was the hand of God upon us. We only see two possibilities, either it was
God or it was chance. And so, we'll put this scientific experiment
together and see what happens with the cows and the cart and the guilt offering that we're
sending back. If the cows go one direction, we'll come to
the conclusion that yes, God was behind this. If it goes the other direction we'll know
that it happened by chance. They considered the possibility that something
happened by chance. That's the conclusion that leads me to believe
that at bottom, they were atheists. Some of you are looking at me with puzzled
looks in your eyes, "How in the world does that indicate atheism?" Let me explain it for you. A few years ago, I had the responsibility
in the seminary to teach the theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith, that document
that was produced in the 17th century in England by the Westminster Divines that is the most
comprehensive, systematic expression of historic Reformed theology ever set on paper. And I had done the first chapter of the Confession,
and I went and finished the second chapter of the Confession. And I announced after that, I said, "Next
week, we're going to take up chapter three, which chapter is entitled 'Of God's Eternal
Decrees.'" Now as soon as I announced that, there was
a stir among the students. I mean, they knew what that meant. They said, "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! That means he's going to get into predestination
and all that juicy stuff that has to do with God's sovereignty and human freedom and the
things that every theological student in seminary likes to argue into the night." So the next Monday evening when I came to
the classroom, there were 150 students there. There were like 50 guests. Every one of my Reformed students went out
and dragged one of their Arminian friends by the neck. They said, "Our professor is gonna speak on
predestination this week, and you have to be there and listen." So, I have these people waiting, breathless
in anticipation, to look at this difficult doctrine. And I began by reading the opening words of
chapter three of the Westminster Confession. Let me read them for you now. Chapter three begins with these words, "God
from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and
immutably (that is unchangeably) ordain whatsoever comes to pass," semicolon. Let me state it again in other words, that
God from all eternity, according to His holy counsel, doth freely and immutably ordain
whatsoever comes to pass," semicolon. I read that and I stopped and I said to the
class, I said, "Alright, how many of you believe that? How many of you believe that God foreordains
every single thing that happens -- automobile accidents, train wrecks, the birth of baby,
the death of your spouse, God ordains it, everything that comes to pass. How many of you believe that?" A hundred hands went up. These were Reformed students. These guys were fighting for the angels. This was old hat to them. They didn't have any problem. I said, "Okay, how many of you don’t believe
it?" Fifty hands went up. I said, "Fine." I said, "Okay, let me ask you another question. How many of you would freely acknowledge that
you are atheists?" I said, "Don't be afraid. Tell the truth. Nobody is going to take down names. Nobody is going to report you to authorities. Nobody is going to take out matches and burn
you at the stake. How many of you would call yourselves atheists?" And nobody put their hand up. And I was flabbergasted. I immediately went into my Lieutenant Colombo
routine, you know? I said, "Wait a minute." I said, "There's just one thing I don't understand
here," and I said, "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" I was talking to the wife the other night,
and she said, "I just can't figure this out." And I played this little game with them and
I said, "Let me see if I get this straight. You're telling me you don't believe that God
ordains whatsoever comes to pass, but you're not an atheist?" I can't…I can't put those two together. I said, "Don’t you realize that so far,
up to the semicolon of what I've read, this statement in the Westminster Confession has
nothing in it that is distinctively Calvinistic or Reformed? It has nothing in it that's even uniquely
Christian. Every Jew would affirm what I've just read. Every Muslim would affirm what I've just read. Any cogently thinking theist would have to
affirm what I just read. We haven't even gotten to the Reformed doctrine
of predestination yet. All it says is that from all eternity God
ordains whatsoever comes to pass. I said, "What that statement affirms is that
God is sovereign over everything that happens." The great Augustine in the fourth century
made the comment, carefully now, think carefully, that God ordains, at least in some sense,
everything that comes to pass. It may be in a passive sense, what some people
call God's will of permission. It's a little bit misleading that term, as
if He gives His endorsement or sanction on your sin. He permits your sin in the sense that He doesn't
stop you from doing it. He doesn’t sanction it, but any time that
you commit a sin, God at that moment always had the power to prevent you from doing it. He could have squashed you like a bug, taken
the breath out of your lungs at that minute and stopped you from doing it, and the fact
that He didn't intervene, that He didn't intrude, the fact that He decided to let you do it,
not with His blessing, but to give you the ability to do it without preventing you from
doing it, in a certain sense, you see, He chose that it should come to pass, because
He is absolutely sovereign over everything that happens. And I said, "Do you realize that if there's
one maverick molecule running loose in this cosmos beyond the pale, beyond the scope of
God's sovereign control and authority, you have no reason as a Christian to believe a
single promise of the future that God has made. One maverick molecule could destroy all of
the plans, not only of mice and men, but of Almighty God if God does not ordain whatsoever
comes to pass. Remember when you were children, you learned
a little story, "For want of the nail, the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the rider was lost. For want of the rider, the battle was lost. For want of the battle, the war was lost,
all because of one nail." When I was a boy, one of my heroes was a race
driver by the name of Bill Vukovich, who was killed in the Indianapolis 500. When that super expensive piece of machinery,
a prototype, costing tens of thousands of dollars to build and construct, failed in
a turn, because a 10 cent cotter pin broke. A grain of sand in the kidney of Oliver Cromwell
changed the course of history. A piece of lead in the brain of John F. Kennedy
changed the course of American history. The battle of Fort Duquesne, the French and
Indian war, a young lieutenant had five horses shot out from under him and one bullet from
an enemy rifle went through his shirt as it flapped in the breeze and it went in one side
of his shirt and out the other side of the shirt without even creasing the skin on his
back, and he survived that battle, and George Washington became the first president of the
United States. You know, a tenth of an inch and he wouldn't
have survived that battle of Fort Duquesne. But by chance he made it, through the fortunes
of circumstances. Kennedy was in the wrong place at the wrong
time…I don't know. One maverick molecule outside the authority
of God's sovereign control could thwart His plans and prevent the return of Christ, could
prevent the vindication of faith that you hold dear. Beloved, there is no such thing as chance. I was in a discussion once with a professor
at Harvard University. He taught in the graduate school at Harvard
in the field of philosophy of science. And we were talking about the origin of the
cosmos, and he didn't believe in God. And I said, "Well, where do you think the
universe came from?" And he said, "Well, the universe was created
by chance." And I said, you know, "The universe was created
by chance? I'm not sure I understand what you mean." I said, "Are you telling me that the power
supply for everything that is, the Big Bang of the entire universe, that it was ultimately
caused by chance?" And he said, "Yes." I said, "That's amazing!" I said, "Don't you realize that chance can't
do anything?" He said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, let me show you what I
mean." And I took a coin out of my hand, out of my
pocket and I said, "I'll say to you here, if I took a 50 cent piece and balanced it
on my thumb, and I said to you, I'm gonna flip this coin up in the air, what are the
chances that it comes up head or tails? What's the chances?" Hmm? Go ahead. One in two. What's the percentage? 50-50. "No, no, no, no, no, 50-50." Now listen to what I said. I said, if I flip the coin what are the chances
that it comes up heads or tails? A 100%, unless it stands on its head somehow. You know, I fooled you, didn’t I? Ha, ha… Okay what we mean though, is I said, "Okay,
if I flip that coin, what are the chances that it will come up heads?" 50-50, you know 50% chance, because there
are only two options and only two sides of the coin. And so we say the odds are, the chances are
that it will come up heads 50% of the time. Now what I asked this gentleman from Harvard
was, "How much influence does chance exert on the flip of the coin? What causes that coin to come up heads? Does it have anything to do with where I start,
whether it's heads up or tails up. How much pressure I exert with my thumb, the
density of the atmosphere, how many revolution it makes, whether I catch it here, here or
here, and after I catch it, whether I turn it over or don't turn it over." There are all those variables. We could add to those variables, so many complexities
that would drive us nuts, trying to predict how it's gonna turn out. But we can cut the Gordian knot, we can reduce
the options to the simple options that are there mathematically. The mathematical possibilities are there could
be one in two, and so I say, the chances are 50-50 that it's going to come up heads. But how much power, how much force does chance
exert? Absolutely none. And I said to that professor, "Chance cannot
do anything, because chance isn't anything." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "The word chance is a word that we
use, a cipher, a symbol to describe mathematical possibilities. You're now giving to chance not just an empty
word to describe possibilities, you're giving it being, power, ability to do work." I said, "Chance can do nothing because chance
is not a thing. It's not an entity. It is no thing." Let me say it again, "It is no thing." Faster, "It is no thing." Even faster, "It is nothing! Do you see that? Chance has no being, and if it has no being,
it has no power. For something to do something, it first must
be." And when I said that, that good professor
went like this, "Yes, of course, what could be more obvious. I can't believe I made that mistake." Isn't it interesting that some of the most
foolish mistakes are the kinds of mistakes made by the most learned and brilliant of
people? Chance can't do anything. What are the chances that the universe was
created by chance? Huh? Not a chance, because to say that the universe
was created by chance is to say that the universe was created by nothing. And I realize that there are intelligent people
who say that, in effect, because people are saying that the universe created itself. That's madness. For something to create itself, to be self-created
would require what? For something to create itself, it would have
to be when? Before it was. To create itself, it would have to be before
it created itself to be. What it is, it's giving me a headache. It would have to be and not be at the same
time in the same relationship. The most fundamental violation of reason is
to say something like that. Nothing can create itself. Nothing can do nothing. And people argue about creation, and I say
to them, "Do you believe that anything exists now? Do you exist now? Is there anything here? Even if you think it's all an illusion, do
you think the illusion's here?" And I say, "Where did it come from?" Ladies and gentlemen, if anything exists now,
this is elementary, then there never could've been a time when there was nothing, because
the most fundamental maxim of all reason and all science and all philosophy is the maxim,
ex nihilo nihil fit, "out of nothing, nothing comes." If there was ever a time when there was nothing,
the only thing there could possibly be now couldn't possibly be now, because the only
thing there could be would be nothing. And nothing is not something, not even a little
something, not even a microscopic something, not even a subatomic something. It is nothing. If there was ever a time that there was nothing,
there would be nothing now. So, there always had to be something. Something that had the very power of being
within itself, or nothing could possibly be. Is there anything more elementary than that? If the equation is God or chance the only
possible solution, ladies and gentlemen, is God because chance can do nothing. Well, what does that mean about atheism? I said, "If you believe in chance, that things
happen by chance, what you're saying is, God is not sovereign." And I've never met a Christian yet, I've met
plenty of people who weren't Christians who denied the sovereignty of God, but I've never
met a Christian who said, "I do not believe in the sovereignty of God." Every Christian says he believes in the sovereignty
of God, but it takes about five minutes to probe that, to discover that not one out of
a hundred Christians believe in the sovereignty of God. As soon as you begin to examine it, there's
precious little sovereignty left. If God is not sovereign, God is not God. It's that simple. And so I say, the Philistines with their doctrine
of chance were basically atheists. Now again, give them some credit. They were prescientific. They were primitive people. They didn't have the benefit of the scientific
revolution, did they? Nobody in this day and age would attribute
power or reality to chance. Don't I wish. The dominant view of the origin of the cosmos,
the dominant view of the origin of the human race in our culture is that both man and his
world have come by, from, and through chance. Now if you don't give ontological status to
chance, they'll still say that it still came by this chance, random collision of molecules
or of atoms that happened for no reason at all. Examine that carefully, and it's the same
idea of something out of nothing. Well, let's see what happens with the experiment. "So the men did so, and they took the two
milk cows and hitched them to the cart and shut up their calves at home. And they put the ark of the Lord on the cart,
and the box with the golden mice, and the likenesses of their hemorrhoids. And the cows took the straightway in the direction
Beth-Shemesh, and they went along the highway, lowing as they went and did not turn aside
to the right or to the left. And the lords of the Philistines followed
them to the border of Beth-Shemesh." I love this story. I don't know anything about farming or about
the cattle industry. I have a man here in the studio audience tonight,
who has his PhD in cows, and he's tried to help me struggle through this text. I always thought, you know from singing the
Christmas carols, "the cattle are lowing," I thought that that meant that they were sort
of like purring like cat…like contented kittens. You know, Elsie, the contented cow. I thought that this kind of meant that that
when these cows were going to their destiny and following the route that they were traveling
on the road to Beth-Shemesh, that the fact that they were lowing meant that they were
joyful in their task, and they were sort of moving along singing, "Onward, Christian cows!" But that's, I've been corrected by that, and
they say "No, what's happening here is that the Philistines in their experiment are trying
to get the cows to act contra naturam, against nature. And when a cow has a calf, and that cow has
never been yoked, put on a cart before, that the natural impulse of that mother cow is
to be with her calf. And you take that mother cow away from her
calf and put her on a cart and just let her loose, nature would say that she would make
a beeline back to her calf. But instead, these cows go straight for Israel,
straight for Beth-Shemesh, turning neither to the left or to the right, lowing, crying
as they go. But no matter how sad and torn they are, they
are obedient to the sovereignty of God's providential rule. And they crossed the border into Israel and
came to the threshing field of Joshua in Beth-Shemesh. And the Scriptures tell us that these cows
that hadn't moved to the left and the right, marched up, carrying their cargo and stood
on the stone floor of Joshua. And when the Jewish people saw it, saw them
coming, the word went through the community. Everybody gathered around. They could recognize, as this cargo approached,
that these cows were bringing back to Israel, the ark of God. The Bible doesn't say it happened, but I'm
sure one of the lookouts, when he recognized what was coming back across the border of
Israel, screamed at the top of his lungs, "Kabod! The glory of God has come back." And as the people celebrated the return of
the throne of God, they dismantled the cart, took the treasure, carefully prepared the
ark of the covenant, and the cows stood there on the stone. The farmers were so happy that they wanted
to offer a burnt sacrifice of thanksgiving to God. And so they took the cart and cut it up into
firewood, and as the cows stood there in obedience, they put the wood underneath them and they
kindled it and sacrificed the cows on that spot. Centuries later, God sent a lamb on a mission. In His providence, God ordained from the foundation
of the world that this lamb should go to an altar to be slain as a sacrifice. And the record of history was that this lamb,
as He was led to the slaughter, opened not His mouth, but neither did He turn to the
left nor did He turn to the right, but He went with his face set as a flint towards
Jerusalem to the place of sacrifice. Do you think that happened by chance? Do you think that the Lamb of God went forth
to die perchance? Or did God, from the foundation of the world,
freely and immutably, by the holy and wise counsel of His will, ordain that it should
come to pass? Nothing that ever happens to you happens by
chance. If God is God, then He is sovereign. And if He is sovereign, there are no maverick
molecules, and no maverick molecules, no accidents, no accidents, nothing happens by chance. What are the chances that God would leave
your redemption to chance? Ha…not a chance.
