Providence, Sins laid upon – Charles Spurgeon

BRETHREN and sisters, let me warn you against the many ways in which men have sought to discover God’s will apart from his word—all foolish, and some of them wicked. I have known some who have opened the Book as if the passage on which they should alight at hap-hazard became their oracle, or if another passage of a different complexion, irrespective of the context, should open or turn up, that should guide them. Do you not know that this was an old heathen custom? The Romans, using Virgil or some other poet, as you use your Bibles, did just the same thing. When you are so doing you are simply guilty of idolatry, and might just as well go to the shrine of Delphi and consult the Pythian oracle, and thus tempt the Lord your God. We have known some cast lots to know what they should do; as if the most precarious hazard could interpret God’s will, which is so clear and plain! I marvel how any civilized man can be so besotted as to do such things, and yet I know that this is an evil pastime and practice which lingers among some Christians. Others judge of the Divine mind by providence. But what do you mean by providence? Is it the current of the wind, the drifting of the tide, the aspect of the clouds, or the fortuitous coincidences that have arrested your attention? Such providence, you know, will guide you any way, if you follow that. Jonah went to go to Tarshish, and he found a ship—of course he did—a providence was it? Yes, he might have said, “I should never have gone, but the finger of providence seemed so clear.” Many people have got into prison through such providence. Your rule is not to be providence, but the command of God. Who are you that you should interpret providence? Is that a providence when a man means to rob another that he finds the house neglected? If a man means to cheat, is that a providence that he meets some easy customer in the course of business? Yet many talk so, and try to lay their sins upon the providence of God. My brethren and sisters, never do this; you will either be the victims of infatuation or the perpetrators of wicked folly, if you do anything of the kind.